Planning Permission Granted for Community Fire Station

16/11/2012

Planning permission has been granted for the rebuild of Penkridge Fire Station. The station will be rebuilt to include community facilities on its existing site.

“The existing station, built in1972, is looking very tired now and is proving costly to maintain. It was also built when we were purely a reactive service just dealing with incidents and so it wasn’t designed for the pro-active service we are today, dealing with the community. "

Station Manager, Ian Dawson.

The rebuild of the station will include a community room, seating up to 20 people, a gym for use by firefighters and supervised community groups and a training area for the firefighters.

The station is part of a £50m private finance initiative (PFI) funded project which will see the rebuild of 11 fire stations across the county. Contractor Blue3 will be responsible for the design, construction and ongoing maintenance of the building. Construction on the project will start in spring 2013 with all stations expected to be completed by the end of 2015. Building schedules for each station will be confirmed in spring 2013.

Station Manager, Ian Dawson said: “The existing station, built in1972, is looking very tired now and is proving costly to maintain. It was also built when we were purely a reactive service just dealing with incidents and so it wasn’t designed for the pro-active service we are today, dealing with the community.

“The firefighters have been actively involved in the design of the new station and are looking forward to having new community and training facilities.”

PFI Project Manager, Norma Putman said: “We are delighted that planning permission has been granted for the new station and we look forward to giving the residents of Penkridge and surrounding areas a community fire station they can be proud of.”

“Our first PFI project, which saw the build of three new stations and the rebuild of a further seven, is now complete. The project has been a huge success and the community facilities attracted over 2000 bookings last year alone, we hope this project will be equally as successful.”